For your site to rank in a web search query, search engines must understand what each page is about. Good search engine optimization practices makes it easy for search engines to crawl and index your site optimally. A web page title is one of the most important elements of on-site optimization. It tells search engines what your page is about, so that information can be retrieved when someone searches for it.
There are several big and small things to consider when developing content for your website. In today’s blog post we’ll address one of the big things: web page titles. Regardless of how great your site looks, how much you spent on it or how much time was devoted to it, if it doesn’t get found, it won’t be seen.
What is a web page title?
A Page Title, also called a Title Tag, is HTML code that indicates the title of a page. It appears at the top of the browser window when a webpage loads. It also appears on the search engine results page.
On the loaded page
On a search engine results page
Chances are your site content was written with a human audience in mind. But humans aren’t the only ones reading it. Search engine robots, also called bots or spiders, read it, too. In fact, web page title is the first thing the bots look at.
These bots locate web pages and from them they grab key information to use on the results pages. If they can’t figure out what the overarching theme is for the page, they won’t be able to index it in a way that people searching for that content can find. That’s why optimizing web page titles can help improve search engine rankings.
Use a different title for each page
Since the goal of this exercise is to help the bots and the humans reading it understand the purpose of the page, it is critical that each page have its own title tag. Be straightforward, not salesy. Clearly convey the contents of that page in the web title.
Although you should include your company name in the homepage title, including it in the title of every page isn’t necessary. Instead, choose words that reflect the specific content of each page. Use common keywords and phrases instead of industry lingo and limit your page title to 64 characters. Finally, the page title should be typed in title case, which means the first letter of each word is capitalized.
Web page titles in search engine optimization
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving the visibility of a website to search engines. Many factors influence your standings in search results. One important element for individual pages is the page title. If you would like to improve your search engine rankings, give us a call at (518) 392.0846, email [email protected] or visit our Search Engine Optimization page.